(Photo J.Maus/BikePortland
Here are the bike-related links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:
Traffic overloads: Here’s the problem with thinking of congested city streets as a backlogged garden hose that needs widening: “cities aren’t the hoses, they’re the gardens.”
Footballer cyclist: Former Pro Bowl tight end Kellen Winslow Jr. wants to be the first NFL player to become a professional biker.
Stop-sign stings: A blogger for SFGate.com has published a brief but thorough explanation of why it is dumb to enforce full stop sign stops by people biking. “If we can only punish a tiny fraction of traffic violations … the crucial question … is which tiny fraction of violations we should punish.”
Canadian scandal: Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s campaign bus got caught parking in a bike lane.
Sounds familiar: “Immigrants to Singapore consume far more niceness than they would like to, and at high prices,” writes Tyler Cowen, finding a good way to describe the biggest problem of a thriving city.
Dutch car love: Dutch bike infrastructure doesn’t reflect a lack of enthusiasm for cars, explains David Hembrow. Just the opposite — it allows the Dutch to bike comfortably in a car-loving country.
Advertisement
Gas tax: Michigan’s Republican governor is arguing that if he got re-elected while pushing for higher gas taxes, other politicians can too.
Acceptable jaywalking: D.C. engineer Bill Schultheiss says he calls the refusal to wait for this pedestrian signal before crossing the street the “Idaho walk.”
This scene repeats itself everywhere #RewardingTheCarTrip #IdahoWalk #IdahoStop #LOS_A for who? pic.twitter.com/PUahTKFUBx
— Bill Schultheiss (@schlthss) August 7, 2015
Bike capital: Carlton Reid follows up on his piece about Portland biking with a story about how the bikingest city in the United States, Davis, Calif., rose and (for a while, at least) fell from grace.
Pedestrian rage? As Seattle’s sidewalks crowd, some say they’re seeing it.
Door ramps: The brilliant bike-friendly designers at Toyota have come up with an innovative solution to dooring collisions, reports Clickhole.
Stoplight history: The traffic signal turned 101 last week. The Telegraph has an array of stoplight trivia.
Armstrong’s doctors: Did they know about the disgraced bike champion’s doping back in 1996? Federal prosecutors are trying to find out.
Operating costs: “You don’t not build a road because you’re going to have to maintain it,” says a congressman from Louisiana, inadvertently explaining the reason for the U.S. infrastructure crisis.
And in your video of the week, a GoPro in Seattle captures a man seemingly operating his cell phone while hitting a bike … and a 911 call captures the same man confessing, later that day, to hit-and-run.
— If you come across a noteworthy story, send it in via email, Tweet @bikeportland, or whatever else and we’ll consider adding it to next Monday’s roundup.